Tonight is Game 1 of the NBA Finals, and the buzz is palpable. Can the Heat draw on last year’s disappointment as motivation? Is the stage too big and bright for the youth of the Thunder? Which team will get its vaunted transition game going? And if it is a one-possession game in the final minute, will LeBron James again become a shrinking violet or impose his newly indomitable will? We all want to see a competitive series with no shortage of spectacular
Hang tight, folks. There is just one more day left until the best games of the season arrive. Until then, see all the thoughts of the players heading into Game 1 of the NBA Finals, along with other news, including the tragic situation of veteran referee Greg Willard, Metta World Peace’s new role in a movie and much more. All the superstars going into the NBA Finals shared their thoughts today about the matchups. Here are some notable ones: LeBron James downplayed this
OKLAHOMA CITY — There is an age-old truism pertaining to the NBA Finals that pertains to the question of old age. Young teams rarely, and we mean very rarely, win NBA championships. If the Oklahoma City Thunder somehow manage to emerge from the NBA Finals victorious, they’d be the first team with such a young nucleus to win the title since the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977 — a topic that our Hall of Fame columnist, Mark Heisler, addressed in his column
Now to let the Young Guns shoot it out. … If you’re going to hear that a lot the next week or two, some of these guns are a lot younger than others. By 2007, when LeBron James and Dwyane Wade had both been in NBA Finals, Kevin Durant had yet to be drafted; Russell Westbrook was an unheralded UCLA freshman who had played nine minutes a game; and James Harden was even less heralded as a high school sophomore. Durant, Westbrook and
At the beginning of the season, Chris Sheridan polled our writers and asked for their predictions on a number of things, including the NBA Finals matchup and eventual winner. Chris Perkins, Chris Silva, and I picked the Thunder and the Heat to represent their respective conferences, and all three of us picked the Heat to win the whole thing. See for yourself. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I’ll point out that along the way, I changed my East pick to
It is Chris Bosh’s lot in life to be the third member of the “Big Three.” In the Heat heirarchy, he always is placed behind LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, whose games are more captivating and awe-inspiring. He was mocked last season for crying after a string of tough losses. In this postseason, his nine-game absence due to an abdominal strain was somewhat minimized when James and Wade snapped out of their doldrums and put together an awesome two-pronged attack that obliterated
So much has been written about the Oklahoma City Thunder throughout these NBA playoffs that it’s difficult to find any new nuggets of information about the team and its city that aren’t already in cyberspace. But I’m going to give it a shot. I had the good fortune of working for the Thunder as its Web site writer from 2008 up until last season’s All-Star break, so I have my share of memories and experiences, both first-hand and from the reporting I
The San Antonio Spurs were the favorites heading into the Western Conference Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder, but lost four consecutive games to watch their season come to a disappointing end in Game 6 on Wednesday night. The Miami Heat are in the exact same situation heading into a Game 6 of their own. Have a look at what is going on around the league in regards to this pivotal game, along with other goodies: Erik Spoelstra is still looking